★★★

THIS was an evening when politics trumped music. The audience gave its loudest cheer to a man who did not play or sing a note – The Right Honourable Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party.

Corbyn riffed on his familiar themes of rising inequality, the iniquity of tax cuts for the rich and the sanctity of the National Health Service.

He also seemed to promise that under a Labour government everybody would have the right to be a painter in the morning and a poet after dinner but he left the details vague.

The event was organised by Momentum, the left wing grassroots organisation, and the promised highlight was a collaboration between Paul Weller and Robert Wyatt, veterans of the antiThatcher campaigns in the 1980.

This proved to be something of a damp squib with Weller eschewing his fantastic back catalogue in favour of obscure acoustic efforts. “Bring back The Jam!” an audience member shouted. “Why bring back anything?” snapped the Modfather. “Do something new.”

But from the sturm and drang psychedelia of Temples to the baggy anthem All Together Now from The Farm, there was nothing innovative on offer on this occasion, just retreads of familiar and largely irrelevant ideas.